Okay, that makes sense. I did delete some of them, but it was late at night, and the only technique I knew was deleting/erasing them individually, and I didn't feel like doing that. But I'll try your methods; I have this problem a lot, and usually wind up moving on to an inferior pic that doesn't look as messy. Those tips will definitely help, so thanks!! I'll try to get around to doing an updated version, without all the white pixels on the edge. Or I may jsut make something entirely new, using these techniques. Thanks for the input, Serpentsounds!!

If you're using GIMP, some useful tools are the Select by Color, Select Contiguous Region, and ctrl+select which will actually subtract the next selection from the current selection. This makes it easy to select a very specific set of pixels. For example, select by color and choose a transparent area, then from the menu execute Select > Grow by 1 pixel, then ctrl+select the transparency by color again. Only the 1 grown pixel will be selected, which should be the outer edge of your shape. Extensions of this can make my previous suggestions a breeze to do.

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Last edited by Serpentsounds on Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I am indeed using GIMP. I was using the Select by color mostly for sprite recolors, and I used it to get rid of some of the white pixels; just not all :p. The grow by 1 pixel thing is very useful; I can use that for all those troublesome pics with borders . Is the Select Contiguous region one the wand looking tool?? Either way, thanks for the loads of tips and help!

Yes, the wand icon near the Select by Color is the Select by Contiguous Region tool, and you'd be a lot better off using that when removing backgrounds. Logically, you're aiming to select the region that encompasses the object of your focus, which doesn't always correspond to the same colored pixels.

With this Lugia image, the background is white, but Lugia is also a gray/white, so Select by Color will inevitably select a large portion of Lugia's body if you set the threshold high enough to remove any decent portion of the background. Select by Contiguous Region will recognize the outline between the background and Lugia as separating the regions, and be able to select closer to the edge without affecting Lugia.

Select by Color is more useful when you need to select colors independent of where they are in the image (such as with, as you said, recolors, or as an intermediate step to the edge select technique).

Oh, okay. That explains a lot. I had to unselect a ton of pixels after using the select by color thing, so I could've bypassed that tediousness by using the wand... oh well. Now I know. Thanks, Serpentsounds!

Okay, I found time today to redo the Lugia sig, using Serpentsounds' tip. Here's the Lugia I made:

Rather than making the pixels blend a bit more into the transparency, I went ahead and deleted them. Overkill?? Possibly, but I wanted to see how it looked without them. Kind of an experiment, as I didn't really see what purpose they served. If it looks worse without them, then I'll know for the future.

And the finished result:

You may notice that the Lugia is smaller in this version, and the transparency is probably not exact. But I kinda eye-balled it, until it looked right, so I'm satisfied with it.

What do you guys think??

EDIT: Looking at the Lugia now that it has a background, I probably should've added a dark background temporarily to find those pixels that also needed deleting. But, the Lugia sig looks much better. Muchos gracias to Serpentsounds for all the cool tips!

I have discovered new brushes for GIMP, which led to the actual breakthrough:

I made my own background for a sig. *gasp* No, but really, I was pretty satisfied with it. It's definitely not the greatest, but the simple fact that I may not have to mooch off of Google Images and stuff for my sigs is a great thing for me. I found some cool brushes, played around with them a little bit, then taught myself how to balance colors and how to colorize something. Then I played around with some distorts/filters, and came up with these two pieces:

Admittedly, I think I overdid it with the distorts on the second one; but learning how to do stuff like that is always fun and interesting, so no regrets.

What do you guys think?? I have more brushes than the ones I used here, I just haven't had time to utilize them yet; in other words, I'm going to do another post when I get around to it.

Also, how do you do the slanted lines, like you see on userbars and some sigs?? On GIMP?? I tried to figure it out, but couldn't, and I'd like to play around with it, so any help would be much appreciated.

Nice! I was pretty impressed by the sig background. It's amazing the stuff one can figure out by venturing into random tools.

GIMP doesn't let you easily make diagonals from the get go, but here's how I would do it: First, make a small square image with perfectly diagonal lines at the intervals you want them (Tip: to make a line in GIMP, put a dot somewhere, hold Shift, then put a dot somewhere else, and they will connect). When you've finished, select the whole image and copy it. GIMP's pattern dialog automatically can use whatever is on the clipboard as a pattern, provided that it's image data. Now, in the image you're working on, you can use the Fill tool, and fill the pattern of your small square diagonal image. They should line up nicely, and then you'll be able to use a whole layer filled with diagonals as a background, or possibly a semi-transparent overlay.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. And yes, it's pretty interesting how playing around with stuff lets you get a little better every time.

That makes a lot of sense. Pretty simplistic, too, I guess. It's really too bad that GIMP doesn't allow for that, though; I'm guessing that's a Photoshop kinda thing?? But still, at least there's a way to do it in GIMP. Thanks for the tip, SS!

Well, AP testing and stuff is over now, so I hope to be able to come back and start posting more regularly on Psypoke, especially as school begins to wind down. But to celebrate, I decided to make a new background:

Looking sharp! I actually used that same galaxy brush for the background in my psychic type pokemon sig.

The colors here all fit well, and the pieces in the background are in a good medium of not too prominent but still having a nice presence (thanks in part to the duller tone of the color).

I've never been one for significant usage of flares, as wherever you put them they always seem to look awkward. Though admittedly here, its placement looks better than most, but examining it against the center of the galactic shape, it seems like it doesn't blend as well as it could (the ring around it probably contributing mostly to that). If you're working on something and are sure you want a flare, be sure to check out all the different kinds, as the differences can be pretty noticeable.

True, I see what you mean about the flare. I was looking through filters and stuff, and found them, so I thought I would give it a try. I agree with you in that the ring in the flare is probably makes it look a little worse, but I do like having it there. In the future though, I will probably forgo it unless it's just one of those times where it would look really awesome, lol.

New background:

On this one, I used a new set of grunge brushes; no filters on this one, other than some minor color and lighting changes. On the whole, I kinda like it, and feel that it would look good in a banner or signature or something. However, I feel like it's missing something, so any comments or criticques would be much appreciated. Maybe it's the fact that my brother says it looks like a blood splatter is creeping me out (although I can see where he's coming from, I disagree).

Okay, I actually made a new background and a new sig. Mostly the background was for the sig, but w/e. I decided to go with Braviary for this one; he's just an incredibly awesome Pokemon, and I plan on getting one on my White version (eventually ), so it was time for a sig. There's quite a bit of pictures; I went through a lot of different versions on this one before coming up with one that was satisfactory.

So, this is pretty much in the order I made it in. I learned a lot doing this one; thanks to the people who helped me make it in #Psypoke, especially Serpentsounds. So, if everyone would comment + criticque this, I would be much obliged!

Well, AP testing and stuff is over now, so I hope to be able to come back and start posting more regularly on Psypoke, especially as school begins to wind down. But to celebrate, I decided to make a new background:

Comment and criticque, por favor!!

These Are REALLY AWESOME! You really getting good at the whole backround Thing!I can just imagine Zekrom In this, Useing Fusion Bolt

Thank you, Amber Mine! I agree; after looking at it, I realized that it looks more like blood than I'd care to admit. So, I never used it, and if I did, then it would probably be colorized first. Which is a whole different shtick. But thanks for the praise on the other one!

Okay, now onto my newest project. I rapidly grew bored with the Braviary sig, and kept noticing flaws and things that I would like to improve on it; however, due to the way that I did things with that one, I couldn't fix any of them . Consequently, I decided to make a new one. One with a quite epic theme: BLUE POKEYMANZ. On the chats, I asked for some ideas as to which ones should be included, and received several nominations (Swampert, Heracross, and Palpitoad) and decided the others myself. So, in order of making:

I couldn't decide if which Pokemon to put in the corner there. At first, I had Mantine, but he was crowding things a little too much. I then spread them out and tried some other stuff. My choices were Swablu, Altaria, Latios, and Cryogonal to replace him (they're blue, fly/float, etc.). I ruled out Latios and Altaria because their Sugimori art weren't posed right. Then I tried some stuff, repositioned/resized, and added text.

So, I might edit it again later on; probably just to add a border, though. Comment and criticque, por favor!!

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